


Agent of Change

by romanticalgirl



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not a crack, it's a chasm</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agent of Change

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://attempt-unique.livejournal.com/profile)[**attempt_unique**](http://attempt-unique.livejournal.com/), [](http://sunshineclouds.livejournal.com/profile)[**sunshineclouds**](http://sunshineclouds.livejournal.com/), [](http://memoryfloodsin.livejournal.com/profile)[**memoryfloodsin**](http://memoryfloodsin.livejournal.com/) and [](http://bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com/profile)[**bunnymcfoo**](http://bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com/) who asked for Rudy and Pappy in the [Fall Fandom Free-for-all](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/422866.html). Thanks to [](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/profile)[**oxoniensis**](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/), [](http://alethialia.livejournal.com/profile)[**alethialia**](http://alethialia.livejournal.com/) and [](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/)**inlovewithnight** for their help in being smart and thinky.
> 
> Originally posted 9-18-09

Everything tells him that it’s all going to change today. Excitement is thick in the air, and the whole base is buzzing with the news. He’s known through unofficial channels that it was coming for weeks – Reporter had stopped by to see him when he got stateside and told him the war was over – but today First Recon is coming home.

Of course, here at home, he knows better than anyone that the war’s not over. Pomp and celebration don’t mean shit when people are still dying, but right now he can pretend, since none of those people are his platoon.

The Officers’ Wives Club arranges for him to get a ride from the hospital to the airfield under the condition that he stays in the wheelchair. He agrees because it’s easier than finding his own ride, but he knows he’ll be standing when First Recon disembarks. The real world has probably shocked them by now as the tide’s turning against the war already. He knows it can only get worse once they’re subjected to the 24 hour news cycle and easy internet access.

That all seems impossible to believe as the plane lands, every other emotion blocked out by the all-consuming silent prayer - _Please let them be all right_. He knows they’re all physically okay, but he knows from far too personal experience that there’s more to being okay than bullet holes and bandages.

The disembarking is a relatively quiet affair. It’s early in the morning for everyone in California and the time difference and the ride in the C141 have likely fucked with the Marines. Not to mention the constant mixture of worry, concern and fear that keeps the wives and families quiet. Alpha and Charlie unload first and the air feels hotter and heavier when they filter onto the tarmac. Pappy waves to the guys he’s friends with, nods to those he knows.

Most of them don’t return his wave or his look. He knows the wounded are hard to see, he understands that. The wounded are reminders that someone wasn’t good enough, and Marines pride themselves in being better than just good enough. Eyes skate over him like he’s not even there, though Kocher waves.

Bravo’s the last off the plane. They seem even more subdued than Alpha or Charlie, at least until Manimal spots him.

“Fuck yeah, Pappy! Oo-Rah!” They all seem to come alive, rushing toward him as he braces his hands on the arms of the wheelchair until he’s standing, his weight on his left foot.

“About time you got back.” Pappy grins as he’s surrounded. “I told you to take the left turn at Albuquerque.” The entire platoon converges on him, hugging him in twos and threes. The LT shakes his hand and makes him sit down, Chaffin and Stafford and Person practically fall over themselves to tell him all the shit he missed. He doesn’t listen – tries not to listen – too busy searching the crowd.

Rudy’s standing at the outer edge of the circle watching Pappy. He’s hard to read, the lines around his eyes from squinting into the sunlight sharply defined, wrinkles of pale in his tanned skin. Pappy nods in his direction and it seems to startle Rudy out of his reverie. He nods back to Pappy and adjusts his duffel bag, heading for the bus. Pappy stares after him, brow furrowed, knowing to keep his gaze averted from Colbert and Wynn, the mother hens that they are, and from Person, who never met an awkward situation he couldn’t exploit.

**

Rehab and PT are a pain in his ass, but he does his exercises religiously. It’s the only thing he’s intent on, because he’s realized he’s never missing another battle if he can help it. A few of the guys come by now and then, but most of the time, it’s just him, struggling with the bars and the weights and sweating so much he can’t see from it running in his eyes.

He shrugged off help as soon as he was comfortable with the routine, preferring to snarl at himself through the pain. He’s still without full range of motion in his foot, and he’s worried that he’s never going to be as good as he was.

“You’re ruining your complexion.” Rudy sits in the chair next to him, looking seriously at Pappy’s exposed foot. “Frowning gives you wrinkles, Pap. You don’t want those. No need to be old before your time.”

“What’re you doing here?” The words come out shorter than he means them, laced with frustration as pain shoots up his leg.

“Fair question.” Rudy looks down at his hands then gets off his chair and kneels at Pappy’s feet. Despite hours of gripping the wheel of their victor and firing his weapon, Rudy’s hands are soft, gentle. He kneads Pappy’s ankle, thumbs soothing the pain. Pappy allowed Rudy to drag him to an acupuncturist once, and it felt like this – pain then nothing, only he much prefers it without needles. “It was kind of overwhelming.”

“What was?” Pappy watches Rudy’s face. They’re a team in more ways than the rest of the platoon. He’s felt Rudy’s weight on him, breathed the same breath, killed men as one, but he still can’t read Rudy now, something shielding whatever it is between them.

“You left.”

“You don’t think I know that?” Pappy’s voice breaks slightly. “You don’t think I know that it’s all different now? You think I don’t realize we’re not the same?” He snaps his mouth shut and shakes his head. He can see his reflection in the wall of mirrors behind Rudy. He’s ghostly white around his lips and his face is grey. “I get it, Rudy.”

Rudy’s hands are still on Pappy’s ankle, and Pappy shakes his head, pulling his foot back. Pain floods through him as he stands, but he refuses to give in to it, only swaying slightly on the way to the wheelchair.

“I brought you a gift.” Rudy picks up a bag from the floor. Pappy realizes he hadn’t noticed it until now, which hits him like a truck, wounds him more than a bullet could. He’s _Recon_ , and he missed something as simple as that. He sinks into the wheelchair gratefully. The bag is bamboo and tied with some sort of green vine. “A sort of get well present.” Rudy sets the bag on Pappy’s lap and steps back. “I’m gonna go.”

“Yeah,” Pappy agrees. “That’d be best.”

**

He finally gets released to light duty, a walking boot and cane replacing the wheelchair. He’s gotten adept at flipping people off with the hand fisted around the cane before they can even manage to get an insult or dig out. Most of what he does is paperwork, though he still trains on the range and in a few drills. More and more information leaks about the war and he stops reading the paper and watching the news, each new revelation and protest making the twinge of pain flare up.

He and Rudy avoid each other, and Pappy ignores Person’s digs about divorce and who gets custody of Budweiser, Chaffin and Manimal. The whole attitude of the platoon is off, and Pappy has a suspicion that he’s not the only one who traces it back to the bridge at Al Hayy. He’s heard all about the rest of the campaign over beers and bullshit sessions, piecing it all together from the different sides of the same story that they tell. He knows about Charlie’s nearly disastrous run across the bridge, completely different from their own, about Kocher and Captain America, about diarrhea and blown-out tanks, about Baqubah and Baghdad, about the amusement park and the frustration of not doing enough, not doing anything.

He learns about Rudy taking care of the team, about Rudy and Ray. The humor doesn’t hide the rough edges, all of them scraped raw from the experience. The only story he hasn’t heard is Rudy’s and, if he’s honest, it’s the only one he’s ever really needed to hear.

**

They install him in an office close to the mess, and he forces himself to walk there twice a day. He opens his desk drawer and looks inside at the gift bag Rudy gave him. It’s typical Rudy – a CD of meditative music, moisturizer, tea bags, incense and a bag of whole bean coffee. It’s a strong, solid roast that Pappy knows for a fact that Rudy hates. A roast that Rudy knows for a fact that Pappy loves.

The swill they serve in the mess tastes like swamp water and dirty socks and, even though he’s survived on MREs and T-rats, he can’t develop a taste for the coffee. He pulls out the bag of beans and tosses it up, catching it to feel the heft. Setting it solidly on his desk, he stands up, grabs his cane and his keys and then, finally, picks up the smoky green bag of beans.

The afternoon duty shift has just started, so most of the tables in the mess are empty, the morning rotation either sacked out or making the most of a few hours of sunlight. Pappy rinses out one of the coffee pots, grinding the beans in the nearby grinder while he gets the water poured, the filter set. The smell of ground roast fills the room, even more pervasive as it brews.

He pours himself a cup once it finishes, filling it to the rim and taking a too-hot sip. He groans, the flavor spreading across his tongue. “Damn, that’s good coffee.”

“As good as mine?”

Pappy turns carefully, his hand tight around his cup, the other tight around the cane. “Honestly?”

Rudy nods once, his muscles bunched tightly, his body atypically tense. “Yeah.”

Pappy takes another sip. “Nah.”

Rudy releases the breath he’s holding, reaching out for the cup. “Let me carry that for you?”

Pappy lets him take it, making his way over to one of the tables. Rudy sits opposite him, sliding Pappy’s coffee over before opening a bottle of the organic drink he always has stateside. It’s as pink as Pepto Bismol, and Pappy has to take another deep swig of his coffee to keep from gagging at the smell.

“You saved my life.”

Pappy swallows again then sets his cup down. He curves both hands around his mug and looks at Rudy. He’s heard about the bullet, about the hole in the glass where Rudy should have been, the shell they dug out of the driver’s seat of the Humvee. “Well, I gotta tell ya, Rudy, getting shot in the foot really wasn’t my idea.”

“That doesn’t change the facts. There are cultures that believe I now owe my life to you.”

“And there are some that think you’re just a lucky son of a bitch.” Pappy blows out a breath, watching the ripples skim across the surface of his coffee.

“I have to honor-”

“No. No, man.” Pappy reaches out and rests his palm against Rudy’s wrist. “You believe in doing what’s right, and I respect the hell out of that. I don’t fucking get it most of the time, but you’re the one who believes you get what you deserve, so you deserved to live.”

“You didn’t deserve what happened!”

“Well…sometimes you need a reason, right? You were doing your job, and there was no reason for you to stop doing it. So I was the reason. The…that whatchamacallit. The agent of change.”

Rudy smiles. “So you do listen.”

“Listen, yes. Understand, no.” Pappy takes a sip, releasing his first easy breath since Bravo returned to base.

“But then…that’s not what was bothering you.” Rudy frowns, looking at Pappy intently. After a moment, he shakes his head, his smile showing Pappy the same lines at the corners of Rudy’s eyes. They remind Pappy of the desert before everything fell apart. “No.” Rudy cups his hand over the one Pappy still has on Rudy’s wrist. “You changed my direction, but everything else is the same.”

“But I didn’t…I wasn’t _there_.”

“That’s why we’re partners, Pap.” Rudy squeezes Pappy’s hand then releases him. “When one of us is down for the count, the other steps up. We cover for each other, have each other’s backs.”

“Okay.” Pappy nods, feeling his own grin mirror Rudy’s. “But next time, it’s your turn to get shot in the fucking foot.”  



End file.
